VANCOUVER — Looking sharp and relaxed in blue jeans, a collared shirt and leather jacket, a fit Evander Holyfield walks into the back wine room of a Georgian Court Hotel restaurant and slides easily into a leather chair.

It’s the former five-time heavyweight boxing champion’s first visit to Vancouver. And as the 50-year-old Atlanta native launches into his anti-bullying message — a key reason for his three-day trip — we’re instantly struck by the fact his speech is clear, if not always concise.

Nothing like the slurred mumblings of Joe Frazier and other punch-drunk boxing legends who were here in recent years for pro fight cards at the River Rock Resort.

And as he talks, it’s darn difficult to keep from eyeing his famously chomped-on right ear, especially considering the effects of Mike Tyson’s crazed mid-round nibble are still evident.

Which can’t help but remind us of that hilarious line Tyson uttered in a commercial a few years back for Holyfield’s Real Deal BBQ sauce: “It’s ear-lickin’ good.”

The Real Deal Grill goes on the market in Canada next month and the BBQ sauce soon after. Legacy Partners Group — a Cheyene, Wyo., based marketing company — recently obtained exclusive right to promote Holyfield’s products in this country.

In a release, Legacy says partial proceeds are earmarked (yes, they actually used that word) for the Amanda Todd Legacy Fund, which was established after the Port Coquitlam teenager committed suicide last year following months of being bullied at school and online.

Real Deal BBQ sauce comes in “two knockout flavours.” But asked what makes it so good, Holyfield said the only thing he can tell people is that they have to try it.

“The idea with what BBQ is supposed to be, either it’s going to be hot or mild, do you like the taste? But I never met anybody who tasted the Real Deal sauce and didn’t like it. Mike Tyson even liked it.”

Holyfield, whose eponymous foundation helps underprivileged children, was the youngest of nine kids raised by a single mom. At age six, his mother, Annie, got him involved with the local Boys and Girls Club, a move that he says kept him out of trouble and helped him become who he is today.

“Everything in my life started because my mama made me stick to a game plan. My mama didn’t have no money so the Boys Club paid for what I did because I was a good athlete ... and I had a good attitude.”

Holyfield says that like many kids growing up in the 1960s, he was taunted.

“It wasn’t called bullying back then, but my mama said ‘you got to have thick skin.’ There’s always going to be somebody point out you’re different. ‘You’re poor, I’m not. You’re clothes are raggedy.’

“In this program of (anti-bullying), I want to address the fact that success starts at home, with your parents telling you you can’t be overly concerned what people think about you. You can’t control somebody else’s mouth.”

Like many of his generation, Holyfield lamented the fact that today’s kids “are putting things on (Facebook and other online forums) and doing it to themselves, putting your whole business on a website.

“Who in the world wants to put your business on the website when it’s going to be on there forever? Somebody can be reminding you of everything you do wrong. People don’t understand what they doing to themselves by all this publicity.”

Holyfield has 11 kids of his own by six different women. Several of them, he put into private school, he says, to make sure they got every opportunity to succeed. Some of them jumped off the right path, he admits, “but they got back on. I don’t ever give up on ’em.”

Holyfield was 44-10-2 as a pro and last fought on May 7, 2011, when he beat 46-year-old Brian Nielson of Denmark with a 10th round TKO. He said on his 50th birthday in October that he was retired, but almost immediately “changed my mind ... I still got one in me.

“I’m keeping myself in shape because I do want to fight one more time for a title. I have what it takes to beat the champions.”

The problem is, none of the champions, including the vaunted Klitschko brothers, want to fight him. They don’t want to hurt a senior citizen. Holyfield insists “that they don’t ever fight nobody they don’t think they can beat.”

Although he reportedly earned $250 million in his career, Holyfield, plagued by lawsuits alleging failed child support payments and foreclosures, had to declare bankruptcy last year and move out of his 109-room mansion in suburban Atlanta on which he owed $14 million.

“I had the wrong people (in charge of finances) and the wrong people did the wrong thing and they put me in a situation. They borrowed money off all the stuff that I own. The (banks) didn’t give me the break that Obama gave them and that’s the whole sad point.

”I made adjustments, though. I’m eventually going to get my house back.”

Holyfield spoke Friday night to the Afro News-sponsored Sage Foundation Awards. On Monday, he will be the guest of honour at a charity dinner and amateur boxing night at the Fraserview Hall, with proceeds going to the Amanda Todd Legacy Fund.

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Evander Holyfield hopes to help knock out bullying

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